


Time Share

by thingswithwings



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: D/s, F/M, Friendship, Heroes are assholes, Painplay, Sparring, Undernegotiated Kink, asgardian epic poetry, asgardian snobs, probably not the healthiest way to approach kink or sex, what do you do with the hulk on a spaceship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 10:07:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20151874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingswithwings/pseuds/thingswithwings
Summary: “I see his dreams. A cure for me.” Hulk blows out a breath. He hates Banner so fucking much.“That’s bullshit,” Angry Girl says. “I wouldn’t let that happen. Fuck that. I’d beat the shit out of him and bring you back.”Hulk looks over at her. He can feel the idea, just out of reach. She looks back, turning her head in a way that means a question. Hulk knows things like that now. She’s the one who taught him.





	Time Share

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote part of this just after Ragnarok, then finished it (mostly) just after Infinity War, then found it again today and tidied it up to post it. So just imagine Endgame doesn't exist. That's a good strategy for lots of reasons, actually.

The ship is boring. There are no fans of Hulk. No bright pretty parade with Hulk’s face in it. No contests to win. No fights to get excited for. No Hulk-sized rooms to celebrate his victories. No joy to be found in the hunt, the chase, the smash, the battle. Only walls, all around him, closing him in. The walls are close together and the ceiling is low so Hulk has to squeeze through the ship, walls dragging against his skin and making his teeth clench. 

Hulk knows he can’t smash the walls. He knows. In his head, Banner sleeps, but in his thoughts are worry worry worry about Hulk hurting people, and Hulk knows he can hurt everyone on the ship with one punch that lets all the air out or breaks the engine.

But he looks at the walls and he wants to smash them.

He goes to find the Angry Girl instead.

*

“So you’re the little guy too, huh?” Angry Girl says. She ducks his punch, watching him for an opening. Hulk is annoyed.

“Less talk, more spar,” he growls, and lunges forward. Angry Girl is slippery and fast. She hits his side with her club as she goes. Hulk feels it.

“Talking is sparring,” Angry Girl retorts. That’s even more annoying. Like Banner logic. Hulk lets her get close and then grabs her by the throat, picking her up and squeezing.

“Oh, think you’ll stop me talking this way,” Angry Girl gasps. “Have to squeeze harder for that.”

Squeezing harder is how to kill her. Hulk can tell those kinds of things now, what makes a kill and what doesn’t. She’s the one who taught him.

Hulk screams and throws her across the room. She’s not soft like a human, like Banner, so she bounces off the wall, makes a noise, then gets up.

“Seriously, you okay?” Angry Girl asks, walking back toward Hulk. Hulk crouches down and rests his arms on his knees. He looks down at the floor. His back heaves with his breath going in and out.

“Hate this ship.”

“Yeah, I get that. Not really made for you. Or for me, for that matter.” Hulk hears the sound of a bottle opening, a throat swallowing. “Too bad for you you can’t get drunk. Makes boredom easier.”

Hulk looks up, squinting at the bottle in her hand. It’s hard to remember, but he thinks the liquid in the bottle is much lower than yesterday.

“Angry Girl drinks too much,” he says. 

“Unlike you, I’m not one good tantrum away from tearing this ship to pieces, so I think I drink exactly the right amount.” She crouches next to him. Their bodies are in the same position, his big, hers little. He likes that. They’re the same.

“Banner wants to kill Hulk,” Hulk says. “Never let me out again.”

“Kill you?” Angry Girl asks. “He didn’t seem like much of a killer to me. Seemed like he handed that job over to you, when the time came.”

Hulk snorts. “Not wrong. Banner lets me do the smashing.”

“So what do you mean?” She drinks again. Too much.

“I see his dreams. A cure for me.” Hulk blows out a breath. He hates Banner so fucking much.

“That’s bullshit,” Angry Girl says. “I wouldn’t let that happen. Fuck that. I’d beat the shit out of him and bring you back.”

Hulk looks over at her. He can feel the idea, just out of reach. She looks back, turning her head in a way that means a question. Hulk knows things like that now. She’s the one who taught him. 

“That’s what does it, right? When he gets hurt, he turns into you? I saw it.”

Hulk can’t remember the time Banner spent with her, but it makes him angry, the idea that she saw him puny and soft. He doesn’t want her to see that again. But he wants to smash the walls, wants it wants it, and he knows he could do it. He can already feel how they’d splinter, hear how they’d rush away from the ship and into the vacuum of space.

It would hurt her if he did that. Thor too. Others on the ship who have been kind to Hulk.

“You can bring me back,” Hulk says, stuck on the thought. A friend, who cares about him. Who wouldn’t let Banner keep him asleep.

“You want me to do that? You could turn into him for a day, then I could slap him a good one to make him turn back into you.”

Hulk huffs out a snort of laughter at the image. He doesn’t have Banner’s memories, but he can feel his feelings. Can feel how Banner would react to different things. When he thinks of Angry Girl slapping Banner, he can follow the thought to the way Banner would feel about it.

“Might not work. Banner likes that.” He mimes with his hand, slap slap.

Her face changes in a way Hulk doesn’t understand. “Oh really,” she says. “You never mentioned anything like that.”

Hulk laughs his full laugh. “Hulk is not Banner! Don’t pretend to lose. Only like to win.”

“Sounds like you two have a complicated relationship,” Angry Girl sighs. She stands back up, then offers her hand to Hulk. Hulk takes it. He doesn’t need help, but he likes the way it feels to let her. She tugs on one of his fingers while he stands.

“One day,” Hulk says, the idea fully formed now. “For just one day. We’ll try.”

*

When Bruce wakes up he’s on the floor, but it’s a clean floor; already he’s doing a lot better than he has the last few times he’s woken up from being the Hulk. He sits up with a wince, muscles pulling as if they haven’t been used in days.

He hears a low chuckle and manages to open his eyes to look for the source. It’s the woman from before, the Asgardian warrior. She’s in light clothes, not the plate she wore previously or her white battle suit, and her sword is nowhere to be seen. They must not be in much danger.

“It’s funny, I should’ve seen it before. You have the same facial expressions.”

“What?” Bruce asks, then modifies to “Who?”

“You and Hulk. You make the same faces.”

Bruce sighs. “We have the same face.” He’s draped with a blanket, but he’s naked underneath. “Did I hurt anyone?”

Oddly, there’s no damage to the room he’s in; not a single hole in the floor or tear in a curtain. There are curtains. 

“Yeah, absolutely you did. You fucked up Fenrir pretty good. Saved the day long enough for Thor and Loki to bring down Ragnarok.” She cocks her head at him, consideringly, then punches him on the shoulder.

“And the other guy . . . he got worn out? Knocked out in the fight?” It doesn’t feel like years, this time. It feels like only days. Bruce takes a deep breath. He didn’t think he’d ever be himself again.

“He decided to let you have a turn. You get a day, then it’s back to him.” She’s watching him carefully for his reaction. Bruce has no idea what his face is doing, because he’s really out of practice having a face and also because he’s having about six different emotions at once.

“He—let me have a _turn_,” Bruce repeats slowly. 

“Thought you were supposed to be the smart one.” 

“It’s just that he’s never done that before.” 

She shrugs, as if indifferent, but Bruce can tell that she’s invested in this somehow. “He’s never had a friend who could convince him to do it before. And he was worried about the ship. Thought he might lose his mind from boredom and wreck it.”

“You’re telling me he changed back into me altruistically.” Bruce is deeply skeptical, and that seems to annoy her. 

“Yeah, he’s not such a bad guy, you know. He doesn’t want our spaceship carrying the last of Asgardian civilization to crash.” She laughs, then shakes her head, as if at a joke she’s sharing with herself. “Not that it’d be a _bad_ metaphor.”

Bruce blinks twice, then stands up, letting the blanket fall, and looks out the window. Outside, there’s . . . space. Stars brighter and clearer than he ever saw through a telescope, and in different configurations. He’s in space. “You’d better, uh, tell me the rest,” he says. 

She tosses something at his face, which he catches in belated confusion. 

“Put some clothes on. Asgardians generally don’t like it when people just walk around in the nude.” She laughs again as he looks down at the pants in his hands, mind shifting tracks slowly in his post-Hulk state. “You two really are a lot alike.” 

Bruce frowns, but he can’t tell if that’s meant as a compliment or not. He doesn’t think she can, either.

*

Since there’s no danger this time and no pressing need to get anywhere, Bruce actually gets to shower, and eat, and catch up with Thor a little. Thor is down an eye from the last time Bruce saw him, but he looks a lot happier. 

“Guess your team won after all,” Bruce says, shrugging. Thor claps him on the shoulder, in a way that annoys Bruce right down to the quiet shivering Hulk at the center of his being.

“Thanks to you, in part! I knew you would not let us down, Banner.”

“I gotta stop letting myself be put in a situation where turning into him is the best moral choice,” Bruce mutters. “Are we going back to Earth?”

“Yes. We should arrive in a year or two.”

Bruce blinks. “You can’t keep the Hulk cooped up in a spaceship for two years!”

“Good thing we’ve got you, then, isn’t it?” Thor grins at him. Bruce tries to imagine his days ahead, weeks and months trapped in a fragile metal container full of the only breathable air around, trying not to turn into the Hulk and kill everyone. Sounds amazing.

The drunk warrior lady kinda sticks with him through the day, showing him where stuff is. Bruce thanks her but he gets the feeling she’s not doing it out of kindness. Or not kindness to him, at least.

“What’s your name, anyway?” Bruce asks, while they eat together in the spaceship cafeteria. He doesn’t know what they’re eating but he doesn’t have the energy to ask. “Thor doesn’t call you anything.”

“Thor doesn’t know which Valkyrie I am. No one does, so they’ve just been calling me Valkyrie.”

“But that’s your . . . title,” Bruce says. He frowns. He read about the Valkyries when he was a kid. “Aren’t there like. Lots of you?”

“Yeah, not so much. Not anymore. I watched them all die. Any other painful wounds you want to poke at, Banner?” She sounds like she’s being sarcastic, but Bruce thinks she might be actually angry.

He holds up his hands. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry. I just want to know what I should call you.”

She shrugs, performing perfect nonchalance. Bruce watches, fascinated. He knows that gesture from the inside of his body.

“Valkyrie is fine.”

“What does the Hulk call you?”

This brings out a grin. “Angry Girl,” she says.

Bruce doesn’t recognize the sensation at first, it’s been so long, but after his eyes are already closed and his head is already thrown back in laughter he remembers the word for the feeling: _delight_. 

“No wonder he likes you so much,” he says. He can feel it, too, a rush of affection and trust for this person he barely knows. His heart beats in his throat as he realizes that those feelings are coming from the Hulk, that the Hulk is capable of feeling those things. He never has before, not to this depth, not with this much . . . Bruce pokes at the emotion. Fondness, he thinks.

“We make a good pair,” Valkyrie agrees, smiling back at him.

*

Hours later—there’s no day or night in space, of course, but the ship lights are dimmed and he thinks it’s what passes for night—Valkyrie leads him back to the room they started in and claps her hands briskly.

“Right, time to go back,” she says. Bruce goes cold.

“What, you meant that? You’re going to—to let him loose again?”

Her eyes darken. “I made a promise to my friend,” she says, slowly.

“And if your friend w-wrecks this ship? Y-you said yourself he was worried about it.” Bruce hears himself stuttering, feels his hands starting to tremble. Hilariously, fear is one of his triggers for hulking out, and right now there’s not much he fears more than being the Hulk. 

She raises a hand and rests it on his shoulder. He doesn’t know why, but it calms him down, as if he already knows to trust himself in her hands. He twitches, feeling betrayed by his body’s reactions.

“A day for him, a day for you. That’s the deal. You’ll be back before you know it.”

“And if he doesn’t let me back out again?” Bruce asks. He swallows reflexively. His throat is so dry. His hands are sweating. 

“That’s the point, mate. You two have to trust each other.” 

Bruce snorts out a laugh. Valkyrie shakes her head in disbelief.

“Are you the same person or not? It’s so fucking confusing.”

“No shit,” Bruce mutters. He takes a deep breath, nodding his head. Okay. He can do this. He’s done it before.

“You need like, some help? Want me to give you a little,” she claps her hand to his cheek twice, _slap slap_, only miming a blow but connecting hard enough to make a skin on skin sound, “roughing up?”

“Uh, that’s okay. Probably better if we’re not writhing around in pain during the change.”

“We?” Her eyebrows go up. Bruce feels his skin go hot, but he’s not sure why.

“Me and the Hulk,” he explains.

“So you just . . .” she gestures. 

“Give in to the Hulk, yeah,” Bruce says. He takes another breath and looks for that spark of anger inside him, the urge to destroy, to throw a huge fucking tantrum and lose his shit.

“You’re not doing it,” Valkyrie says, after a minute. 

“I know I’m not doing it,” Bruce snaps, annoyed, though he keeps his eyes tightly closed. “It’s harder than it looks. There’s nothing here for him to want to punch.”

He feels her hand on his face, grabbing his chin and yanking his head up. When he opens his eyes, she’s looking right at him. “There’s me,” she says, breathlessly, right before she hauls off and slaps him.

*

Hulk comes to himself fighting with Angry Girl. She hit him—hit him so hard it _stung_, like fire on Hulk’s face. Hulk can remember the blow. Now, she is laughing and dodging. He chases her for a while but she is fast, and he is tired. He gives up and sits down. She puts her arm on his shoulder. 

“Good to have you back, buddy,” she says.

“Good to see you,” Hulk says.

“I didn’t have to beat Banner up that much,” she tells him. “He agreed to your idea.”

Hulk snorts out a laugh. “First time ever.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that,” Angry Girl says.

*

Bruce passes a couple of weeks alternating with the Hulk, and to his surprise it’s not too bad—he wakes up ravenous and sometimes Thor or Valkyrie make jokes he doesn’t understand, but nothing is destroyed, and no one is hurt, and all the other people on the ship give him a wide berth but no one tries to kill him or anything, which is nice.

And every night, Valkyrie shows up and slaps the shit out of him. He can feel, sometimes, the echoes of the Hulk’s first moments in their body, can feel his joy when she hugs him or playfights with him. 

Bruce doesn’t know how to feel about it.

*

Korg sits next to Hulk while Hulk is eating. Hulk eyes him, but Korg stays away from his food. Hulk huffs approval.

“We all noticed that you’re switching off with that little guy now,” Korg says. “Everyone was pretty surprised, and of course we all wish we’d known that the Grandmaster’s Champion could be turned into a much smaller and less intimidating adversary! It’s neat, though, have you always had two bodies?”

Hulk swallows. He knows that Banner would say _no_. “Always,” Hulk says. 

“Fascinating, fascinating. Well, we’re all looking forward to getting to know you and your other body as well, now that we’re all friends. No hard feelings, right mate? We’re all on the same side now, after all, no sense in getting riled up about who’s killed whose friends or anything like that. You were on the side of the revolution, after all!” 

“Agree,” Hulk says. “Truce.” He actually looks at Korg. “You made of rocks?”

Korg’s face is delighted. “Yes, yes indeed I am, thank you for asking! It’s an interesting story, really, how my species came to evolve. You see . . .”

Hulk listens to Korg talk for a long time. He doesn’t mind. But it’s not as good as talking to Angry Girl. Listening to Korg talk, Hulk misses her. He wishes Angry Girl could hear this story with him. 

After Korg leaves, Hulk goes to find her. He tells her about Korg, and it feels better to tell her than it did to hear it from Korg. In return, she tells him stories about Thor, when Thor was a baby, when Thor was even more puny, and Hulk laughs and laughs.

*

“Did you know you’re the first real friend the Hulk has ever had?” Bruce asks Valkyrie one day at lunch. He avoids eye contact as he says it, like it’s not a big deal, and focuses on the green things and brown things he’s eating. Turns out food replicators exist, which is awesome, but also that they are shitty and simple and not set up to make him a curry or a steak dinner, which blows. He is trying Green and Brown Solid Configuration #4 today, while Valkyrie is sampling the Green and Brown Liquid option. 

“What?” Valkyrie’s surprised. Bruce figured as much.

“It’s weird, I can feel how much he cares about you. Trusts you. I’ve never felt that from him before. And even the other people he likes, or trusts . . . it’s not the same.” Now he gathers his courage and looks up to meet her eyes, but turns out he waited too long, because now she’s the one looking down at her food, her lips pressed tightly together.

“Well, good for him,” she says, and takes a large, sloppy bite. Her grip on her spoon is tight enough that Bruce wonders if the metal will hold out.

Valkyrie slaps him into himself that night, but she doesn’t say anything else about it, and Bruce tries not to say anything weird that’ll make it worse: he just stands still in front of her and lets her hit him.

The next time she sees him—a day later for him, two days later in real time—she brings it up again, when they’re fixing one of the replicators together. She gets the theory behind the device and Bruce is handy with a screwdriver; they make a good team. Plus it turns out they use duct tape in space, which is something Bruce always suspected and is glad to have confirmed. Duct tape is universal.

“So I just attach this wire over here?” Bruce asks, pointing.

“Yeah,” Valkyrie says, absently. Bruce nods and starts moving the wire. “So you feel what he’s feeling, huh.” 

Bruce shrugs, not sure how to put it in words. “Sometimes. More now, since we’re going back and forth so much. I feel like he’s—I don’t know. Closer.” It used to scare the shit out of him, when the Hulk was this close to the surface, but he’s starting to get used to it. He might even be starting to trust that the Hulk won’t take over without permission, which would’ve been unthinkable a few years ago. 

The wire sparks and burns him. “Ow! Augh, what the hell, V!”

She peers into the console. “Why did you attach the wire directly to the power input?” 

“You told me to!” 

“I assumed you weren’t pointing to the literal dumbest thing a person could choose to attach a wire to.” She leans over him, removing it and reattaching it to the node next to the power input.

“Oh,” Bruce says.

“Yeah,” she agrees. He watches her as she works, callused warrior’s hands surprisingly deft with the fine machinery. Bruce figures she had to patch up her ship a lot, back on Sakaar. It occurs to him that she didn’t really need his help for this task, but asked him anyway.

“Why do you want to know? About me and the Hulk?” 

She shrugs, eyes glued on the wires. “You’re interesting. And I . . . it’s weird, to have a friend suddenly turn into a new person you haven’t met. And they know stuff about you but you don’t know stuff about them. It’s _weird_.” This last under her breath, insistently.

“Sorry. I don’t get like . . . memories, or anything. Just impressions. Feelings. He really likes you.”

“Whatever. I guess we were both bad people in a bad place at the same time. Not surprising we fell in together.”

Bruce touches her arm, lightly, and she looks at his hand and then up to meet his eyes. “You think he’s a bad person?” He frowns. “Wait, you think _you’re_ a bad person? You’re like, a hero, a warrior, you’re amazing.”

“Look,” Valkyrie says, her eyes narrowing like Bruce has just insulted her mother. “I don’t—I _captured_ the Hulk, okay? He was one of many slaves I brought to the Grandmaster. He doesn’t care because he liked it on Sakaar, but you shouldn’t get the impression that I’m not a, a worthless traitor and insult to the name of Asgard.” At Bruce’s blank look, her expression tightens further, and she slams the space-screwdriver down on the floor. She stands; Bruce cranes his head to look up at her. “Hulk and I get along because he knows not to expect any better from me. You had better learn that too.”

“Uh,” Bruce says. He’s still trying to figure out what to say to that as she makes for the door. It whooshes closed behind her and he’s left looking down at the replicator console. 

“Guess I’ll just finish this on my own and hope I don’t poison anyone,” he says, to the empty room.

*

He doesn’t want to leave their—fight? Conversation? in the air between them until the next Bruce day, so he finds her in her room, where she’s working her way steadily through a bottle of something that looks a lot like rocket fuel. Bruce has seen Thor drink, and wonders if it actually is rocket fuel.

“You didn’t steal that from the fuel cells, did you?” he asks, knocking on her open door. She looks up.

“I hacked the replicator we were working on,” she says. At his raised eyebrows, she clarifies, “I went back after you left, to make sure you weren’t going to poison anyone.”

“Oh, thanks, I appreciate that,” Bruce says sincerely.

“And while I was at it, I told it to make me a big bottle of something deadly. The ship ran out of the real stuff a week ago.”

Bruce nods, hesitates. “Can I come in?”

She gestures expansively at the floor. She’s sitting in the only rickety chair, next to an even more rickety table, and the bed is tucked back in a dark corner. This ship was not built for comfort. He sits down against the wall and crosses his legs.

Wiping her mouth on her sleeve, Valkyrie offers him the bottle. 

“Will I die?” Bruce asks, looking at the bottle in his hand.

“Can you?”

He’s surprised into a laugh, knowing as he hears himself that it’s too loud and too weird, or would be if Valkyrie cared about that kind of thing. He takes a breath and chugs back a couple of swallows, fast as he can. The stuff is harsh as fuck, and in addition to burning his throat it tastes weirdly like . . . 

“Is that lemon?” It’s not, it’s way more artificial, but still. He tries not to gag.

“There’s no base recipe for alcoholic beverages in the system, as it turns out. So I messed with the one for cleaning solution until it was technically potable. Couldn’t get the lemon out.”

Bruce shudders, then closes his eyes and takes another swig before passing the bottle back. Weird that they’d have lemon-scented cleaning solution in space, too. It reminds him of his mother, the way she’d smell after cleaning floors all day. 

“I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable. I was never very good at people and now I’ve been the Hulk for two years and it’s all a little—” he waves his hands wildly in front of his face, to simulate the odd sensation of operating within your skin but not knowing who you are or how it works or whose skin it really is. Valkyrie nods, which is nice of her.

“I meant what I said,” Valkyrie says, and belches. “Hulk and I are friends, we get each other, but that doesn’t mean I’d be a good friend to you.”

“I get that,” Bruce agrees. She passes him the bottle again, and he takes another wincing swig. “I’m not a good person either, you know.”

“Yeah?” She takes the bottle back. “Funny, I don’t see the Asgardians on this ship treating _you_ like shit.”

“Oh, fuck, are they doing that?” Bruce honestly hadn’t noticed, but he’s not good at noticing. Now that he thinks about it, that _worthless traitor and insult to the name of Asgard_ stuff had sounded like something someone else had said to her.

“Why else d’you think I’ve been hanging out with you and Hulk so much? Not like Korg and the others are interested in being my best friends either, since I captured half of them.” 

“Oh. That makes sense. Yeah, we’re kind of bottom of the barrel friends, I get that. But you have Thor, right?”

Technically, Bruce has Thor too, but Thor’s busy kinging and kissing babies and being weirdly intimate with his evil brother in a way that Bruce is terrified to ask further questions about. Bruce hasn’t really spent much time with Thor, outside of the occasional mealtime, since they got on the ship.

Valkyrie shrugs. Bruce shrugs agreement. Neither of them really has any people, except for each other. And the Hulk, of course.

“Anyway, maybe these Asgardians don’t know it,” Bruce is slurring his speech a little already, wow that stuff is strong, “maybe they don’t know, but I am definitely responsible for a lot of deaths. Of like, not bad guys.”

“You mean the Hulk is.”

“We’re sort of the same person.”

“Are you?”

“Plus I once built a robot that destroyed a city. Well. Co-built. In my defense I didn’t try to teach it military tactics, that was Tony, but I did program all the human interaction stuff which in retrospect was a really bad call.”

Valkyrie starts laughing while she’s swigging from the bottle, and little rivulets of the stuff escape her mouth and drool onto her clothes. She sporfles and tries to swallow while she wipes her mouth. “Yeah, that’s a terrible fucking call,” she agrees, when she’s stopped coughing. “Okay, you’re a bad person, fine.”

“Thank you.” Bruce takes another drink. He doesn’t feel his limbs very much but he figures that’s the point. Drink to numb yourself down till your body doesn’t feel like a weird suit you’re putting on, so you don’t have to see the looks people are giving you, like you’re some strange and violent but barely-contained monster. 

He wonders if that’s how Valkyrie feels, too.

“I get it from Korg and the others, but why are the other Asgardians being assholes?” Bruce asks, genuinely curious. 

“Oh, well, they thought all the Valkyries were, like. Heroically and epically dead. They were really fucking proud of how dead we were. And then I show up like, oh, no, sorry, I freaked out in a non-heroic and non-epic way, ran away from the battle after my girlfriend got killed, and I’ve been living a coward’s life at the other end of the galaxy for a few thousand years, how are you? And they’re not impressed. I’m disgracing the name and tradition of the Valkyries, apparently.”

“A long-lost warrior of _myth_ and _legend_ shows up and saves their asses from total destruction, you’d think they’d be grateful.”

There’s a pause before she says, “You’d think.”

Bruce frowns, because this is what she’d objected to before. “I don’t mean, I mean, I know you’re not—whatever, a myth and legend. But you are a hero. I saw it.”

“You can say that to me when I get to say the same thing to you,” Valkyrie says pointedly, and Bruce sighs.

“I take it back,” he says, holding up his hands. “We’re both shitty people who sometimes do good things but only ever by complete accident.”

She nods, accepting her victory.

Something else from what Valkyrie said penetrates the lemon-scented fog in Bruce’s brain. “Your girlfriend got killed?”

“Yeah, by Hela. Long time ago. Guess I finally got my revenge.” 

“I’m sorry, that sucks. That’s really really awful. I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, it’s okay.”

“I didn’t know there were gay Asgardians,” Bruce muses. “That’s cool.”

Valkyrie belches again. “What’s gay?” 

“But wait, didn’t you also—” Bruce pauses so he can say this delicately, though he’s not sure he’s at his peak level of socially aware after multiple swigs of lemon-scented replicator moonshine. “But, you and the Hulk . . . also, right? Like—right? Also?” There, he thinks. that wasn’t too bad.

“What? You knew about that?” She kicks out at him, shoving at his shoulder with her booted foot. Bruce moves with the force of her push. 

“I could kinda feel it. It was a, uh. Big feeling. That was another first for him, by the way.”

“Fuck,” Valkyrie says. “Odin _fucking_ preserve me.”

Bruce laughs. “So, uh, can I ask how you, uh—because, I’m just saying, there’s a size difference—”

“Your counterpart has very strong hands, all right? And so do I, for that matter. And we were lonely and fucked-up at the end of the universe together, it happens. It was only a couple of times. We’re just friends now.”

“Who broke it off?”

“He said,” Valkyrie pronounces, taking a long drink, “that he doesn’t like sex that much, and prefers to spar with me.”

“I see.”

“Shut up.” She grins down at him.

Bruce cocks his head, trying to think how a person who has always been the only one to live inside their skin might feel about something like that, about having had sex while their skin was occupied by someone else. “That’s weird, isn’t it? Like, it’s weird that we’ve done that but we haven’t done that.”

“Because you and the Hulk are the same person,” Valkyrie fills in.

“Are we?”

Her gaze lands on him, sudden and intense, and Bruce feels himself sober up a lot in a very short period of time. “The question is,” she asks, slowly, “do _you_ like fucking, or are you also one of those people who prefer to spar.”

“I’ve, uh, never really sparred. That much. Can’t say I’ve liked what I’ve seen.”

“And fucking?”

“Yeah. I like it.”

“Hmm,” Valkyrie says. She glances at the ship display console on the wall. “Well. Almost midnight. Time to get you back to your other self.”

Bruce swallows. “Okay.” 

She stands gracefully, and he shuffles up awkwardly to his knees. He’s looking up at her, suddenly, vulnerable and soft beneath her, waiting for a blow.

“I probably don’t really need this anymore,” Bruce admits, as she takes him by the collar with one hand, holding him in place. It’s true; he thinks he could manage to turn back to the Hulk without the help, now that he trusts the Hulk to switch back to Banner again.

“I probably don’t either,” Valkyrie says. “But it’s nice, isn’t it?”

Bruce’s eyes widen and he meets her gaze. Slowly, he nods, and she slaps him, hard, hard enough to turn him inside out.

He lets go. It feels good.

*

It’s a Hulk day when they find the second ship. Thor and Heimdall frown at the blood and scorch marks all over the deck. Hulk looks at Angry Girl, and knows her frown is different. She thinks in a way the others don’t. She reminds Hulk of Banner.

“Where are all the bodies?” she asks. Thor and Heimdall are surprised by the question.

They find them in the ship’s mess hall, lined up in a row. Hulk can imagine how they were before they fell, all of them on their knees, waiting to die. They let someone shoot them in the back of the head. Hulk sneers. 

“Cowards,” Hulk says. Angry Girl grimaces.

“According to the crew manifest, this is about half the people who were on board,” Thor says, poking at a screen.

Hulk’s nostrils flare. He turns, checking the doors.

“There’s no one else alive on the ship,” Heimdall says to Hulk. He looks at the same screen as Thor. “They had an entire fleet. I suppose when these people died, they couldn’t crew all their ships anymore, and left this one behind.”

“This feels bad,” Hulk says, snarling. “This feels like evil.” People call Hulk evil. But Hulk knows that Hulk is not evil. He’s bad, sometimes. He hurts people. But evil is different.

Hulk is angry. Evil isn’t. What happened on this ship wasn’t anger. It feels cold.

“I agree with Hulk,” Angry Girl says. “Something terrible happened here.”

“Thanos,” Heimdall says. “I fear he will find us too, if he has started hunting ships in space.”

“Then we take this ship with us,” Thor says. “It has guns, and it’s faster than ours. We have to make sure that Asgard lives.”

No one says that this ship wasn’t strong enough to beat Thanos before. Hulk grunts, annoyed. Hulk doesn’t say it either.

For the rest of his day, Hulk helps to clean the ship. He’s glad Banner will be back tomorrow. Banner will help to fix the ship. Maybe make it stronger. Hulk laughs out loud at his thought.

“What is it, big guy?” Angry Girl bumps his shoulder. She’s helping Hulk to clear the debris. He likes how strong she is, even though she’s small. 

“Funny that Hulk glad for Banner to come back tomorrow.”

“You are? Why’s that?” She throws a broken beam, bigger and heavier than Hulk, into the pile. 

Hulk shrugs. It’s funny, to think good things about Banner. “Banner can help fix this. Make it safe.”

Angry Girl snorts. “Assuming he doesn’t electrocute himself or accidentally turn himself into a big scary monster,” she says. Hulk laughs and pokes her.

“You scared of Hulk!” 

“Not even a little bit.”

Hulk thinks for a long time. They move more debris together.

“Scared of Thanos?”

Angry Girl’s face gets hard. “Yeah. Him I’m scared of. Fuck, Heimdall is scared of him, and Heimdall is older than time and sees through the folding eternity of space. You were right, Hulk, Thanos is evil. And powerful.”

Hulk snorts in derision. “Hulk not gonna kneel down if Thanos comes to kill us.” 

They had released the bodies out of an airlock. Hulk had been glad to see them go.

“Yeah. Me neither. Fucking bet on it. I’ll die on my feet.”

This makes Hulk suddenly, powerfully angry, even though there’s nothing hurting him or making him afraid. He hates feeling angry when there’s nothing to punch. Hulk thinks about Angry Girl dying on her feet, about how angry he would be if Angry Girl died. He thinks about it for a while. Angry Girl is quiet next to him as they work. Hulk doesn’t punch anything. 

Instead of punching, Hulk puts his hand on Angry Girl’s shoulder, gently so it doesn’t hurt. He knows that sometimes you shouldn’t hurt people. Sometimes you should choose not to. She didn’t teach him that. He thinks, maybe, Banner taught him that.

“Don’t die,” Hulk says.

She looks up at him. Her face is all surprise. Hulk thinks, for the first time, that maybe the dead people knelt down so Thanos wouldn’t kill their friends. Hulk wonders if they were cowards after all. Hulk wonders what he would do for his friend, now that he has one.

“I’ll try,” she says. Hulk nods.

“It’s a promise,” Hulk tells her, so that she won’t forget.

*

Thor names the new ship The Hope of Asgard, which Bruce thinks is a bit much for a weird blood-covered ghost ship, but they have a naming ceremony. Bruce gets it in his head that they should christen it, and pushes Thor to do it, and then eventually breaks a bottle of Valkyrie’s moonshine over the central console while everyone else watches. The Asgardians aren’t impressed by the broken glass and spilled liquid everywhere, but they clap politely.

“Well that was embarrassing.” Bruce surveys his handiwork after the ceremony is over.

“Wasted a perfectly good bottle of cleaning solution,” Valkyrie agrees. 

“It’s on the floor. Mostly. It’s therefore cleaning the floor.”

Bruce knows this isn’t how cleaning a floor works, but Valkyrie doesn’t challenge him on it, just bends down to help him pick up the glass. The other Asgardians keep their distance. Valkyrie’s eye twitches as she glances up at a knot of people who are talking amongst themselves.

“What, are they being dicks or something?” Bruce stage-whispers.

“Shut your mouth, Banner, fuck,” Valkyrie replies, through gritted teeth. “You don’t help me look less weird and disappointing.”

“Well you should’ve picked a different friend if you wanted that!” Bruce says it way too loud, with his arms flailing around way too much, but to his surprise Valkyrie smiles softly instead of getting madder.

“Guess I should’ve.”

Now he looks for it, though, he can see what she’s talking about; a lot of the Asgardians tend to glance at her, whisper, glance at her again, shake their heads, look down their noses, all that stuff. Bruce had an advisor for some PhD or other who was gossipy like that. Bruce wasn’t very good at understanding it even before he turned himself into a monster, and now it feels like he has to concentrate to even be able to see it. 

“Oh man, they are really being dicks,” Bruce says, a minute later. “You want me to do something? Should I talk to them for you?”

“And say what?”

“I don’t know, that you’re amazing and beautiful and powerful and an actual goddess and they should stop being dicks, something like that. Do you think that would work?”

“I do not think it would work, no.”

“I could talk to Thor, or Heimdall, or someone. Ask them to ask everyone to stop being dicks to you.”

“Do not do that.”

“Well, let me know if you change your mind.”

Valkyrie sighs and hands Bruce the last piece of glass. 

*

Bruce doesn’t talk to the Asgardians _about_ Valkyrie, or on her behalf, or anything. But Bruce does talk to the Asgardians sometimes, because as the months have passed they’ve moved on from treating him like a dangerous monster to treating him more like a weird smelly pet, like something gross but adorable who lives with them in their house for some reason. And when they ask him about it, he tells the story of him and Valkyrie and Thor escaping from Sakaar, with special emphasis on how brave Valkyrie was, how many feats of strength and daring she had accomplished, and how she’d thrown herself into danger to protect the King (then-Prince) of Asgard.

He can’t tell for sure, but he thinks some of the people change their tune a little once that part of the story starts getting around. Especially after people start actually asking Thor about her, and Thor confirms it with his own version of the tale.

*

“I cannot believe you did this to me, you lying sack of—oh. It’s you. I forgot it was you today.”

Hulk doesn’t bother getting out of the bed when Angry Girl comes in yelling. Hulk is tired of breaking things on the ship and people yelling. Hulk broke something earlier today and there was a lot of yelling. Hulk hates the ship.

“You looking for Banner. You like Banner better,” Hulk accuses. Angry Girl growls and throws something at Hulk. It bounces off of Hulk. Hulk not feel it. Hulk not care.

“Oh, I see, you’re feeling sorry for yourself.”

“Broke something.”

“Ah, I did hear a lot of yelling earlier. That was you? Is everyone all right?” 

“No one hurt.”

“Just your feelings.” Angry Girl comes further into the room. There’s no room on the bed that isn’t taken up by Hulk, so Angry Girl sits on Hulk’s thighs. 

“Hate this ship. Hate all these puny people.”

“That’s fair.” Angry Girl’s weight on Hulk’s legs feels good. Hulk hates being held down but he likes holding Angry Girl up.

“Why you mad at Banner?”

“He told people about me, after I asked him not to, and now some poet wants to, to write a _song_ about me. A song! About my glorious return from exile, and all my heroic battles at the King’s side, she said.”

“Good. Angry Girl is big hero.”

“Yeah? You think so?”

“Maybe you even fight a monster like Hulk one day.”

She punches Hulk in the stomach, hard. Hulk feels it. 

“Can you stop being pathetic for one second so I can be pathetic instead?”

Hulk sits up, steadying Angry Girl with one hand so she doesn’t fall. “Fine.”

“You mean it?”

“Go, go, talk already!” Hulk waves his arms. He knows it’s the same way Banner waves his arms, and hates it. Hulk knows that Angry Girl knows that too, and hates that she smiles at him when he does it.

Hulk hates everything. But not Angry Girl.

“This poet thinks everyone else has maligned me unfairly, that she should tell my side of the story. But she’s wrong. I fought some zombies, whatever. I like to fight, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a fuckup and an exile. I don’t belong with these people.”

Hulk rolls his eyes and conks her on the head with his fist, softly.

“Ow!” She rubs the spot he conked. Hulk laughs.

“Angry Girl dumb,” Hulk opines. “Brave, heroic, powerful, but dumb.”

“Shut up,” she mutters. 

“‘Don’t belong’ is dumb. Asgardian! Belong with the people you come from. Like Hulk belong with Banner.”

Angry Girl looks up at him, squinting. “You hate puny Banner,” she says.

“Puny Banner,” Hulk sighs, agreeing. Hulk does hate Banner. “But Banner made Hulk, and now Hulk makes Banner. Belong.”

“It’s a little different. I’m not stuck sharing a body with all my snobby Asgardian countrymen,” she says.

“Same. Belong. Or else you would go. Too bad, can’t change it.” Hulk lays back down.

Angry Girl lays down on top of Hulk, like Hulk is a bed. Hulk doesn’t mind. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Hulk always right.”

“You want me to tell Banner to help fix the hole you made in the ship?”

Hulk feels a feeling that’s the opposite of punching. Like getting punched. Except nice. Hulk pats Angry Girl on the head. “Yes.”

*

“I knew this would work,” Bruce crows, bouncing on his heels. 

“Shut up, it hasn’t worked yet. And I told you not to do it!” 

“I didn’t talk to anyone for you. I didn’t go to Thor or Loki or Heimdall. I just told the truth about what happened to us, whenever someone asked.”

“Shut up, you know it’s almost exactly the same.” Bruce shrugs. Valkyrie crosses her arms tightly. “Maybe I shouldn’t be here. This is weird.”

“It’d be weirder if you left before it started,” Bruce says. He thinks that’s true. He thinks he’s starting to have a better idea of what’s weird, though here on a ship full of basically-immortal interdimensional beings and a few assorted alien ex-gladiators, his calibrations might be a little off.

Sighing, Valkyrie takes her seat, and Bruce sits beside her. The curtains pull away to reveal a painted scene, women warriors on winged horses, charging through the sky.

“Wait, did you have a _pegasus_?” Bruce whispers to Valkyrie. Several nearby Asgardians shush him.

The poet steps out onto the stage and begins to speak.

“When heavy was the shame of our deeds upon us,  
And Hela crowned with death led her armies against us,  
That was the age of the Valkyries,  
When skies burned and empires fell.”

Bruce listens for a while; he’s never really liked poetry, but the story is interesting. He figures maybe it rhymes in Asgardian. After a few minutes he sneaks a glance at Valkyrie, and is shocked to see tears gleaming on her cheeks. At first he just watches, frozen, but after a few more stanzas he gets himself together and pokes her in the thigh.

She startles out of whatever place she was in, enough to notice his hand resting, invitingly, palm up on his leg. She takes his hand in hers and squeezes. Bruce hopes this poem doesn’t get much more emotional, because he’s pretty sure she could squeeze hard enough to release the Hulk.

He holds her hand for the whole thing. The poem does get a lot more emotional, but Bruce manages to keep himself in his skin. He hopes Valkyrie is doing the same.

*

“I’ve never heard a poem take six hours before,” Bruce says afterwards, trying to be diplomatic when the poet asks him about it. “You wrote a lot.”

“This is but the first part of the saga,” the poet smiles. “We will have part two next week.”

“Wow,” Bruce says. “And no intermission. Everyone must really love sitting still and listening to extended family histories.”

Standing on tiptoe, he can see over the heads of the crowd to where Valkyrie is standing, amid a circle of her people. She’s speaking, and they’re listening, nodding along with her. He smiles. In addition to extended family histories, the poem had also told the story of the Valkyries, and of this Valkyrie, and her first great love, lost in battle. That part had been a lot better. There hadn’t been a dry eye in the house; even Bruce had welled up.

“It was really beautiful. Congratulations,” Bruce says to the poet, and shakes her hand again before walking away.

“Your ploy worked well,” a voice says, from out of the shadows. “I couldn’t have done better myself.”

Bruce turns to see Loki, lounging against the wall with a drink in hand. Thor is standing next to him, looking cheerful. 

“It wasn’t really a ploy,” Bruce says. “I just told some people our story.”

“Nothing more powerful in the world than a story,” Loki says, as if Bruce had agreed with him. 

Thor smiles and claps them both on the back. “Say what you will about Loki, but he has truly reignited the people’s passion for theatre.”

Bruce and Hulk would pretty much say the same thing about Loki, which is that he’s a mass murderer who should get punched, but since Thor doesn’t want that and he’s the king around here Bruce tries to be polite. It’s not like he can talk, anyway.

“Yeah, I think everyone’s really excited for part two next week.”

“Oh, there’s a part two?” Loki asks. Thor’s smile goes a little frozen. Loki looks genuinely delighted. Bruce frowns. 

“Yeah, you know, the part about how we all break out of Sakaar and come to save Asgard?”

“Oh, so, you mean, one of these . . . actors will be playing me?” Thor’s voice gets kind of high at the end of the sentence.

“Did Agmundr make it out of Asgard alive? He played you in our last production,” Loki says, helpfully. “He was spectacular.”

“Was he?” Thor wrinkles his nose.

Bruce wanders away, looking to find Valkyrie, but she’s disappeared. He scours the ship, but doesn’t find her, and figures that’s a good sign she doesn’t want to be found.

Midnight rolls along, and Bruce sighs, pinches himself on the thigh just for the show of the thing, and transforms into the Hulk. It’s not as much fun, doing it alone.

Hulk agrees. Hulk huffs, annoyed. But there’s nothing for Hulk to do. Hulk sleeps.

*

Hulk grabs for her arm, but she dodges. Hulk charges, but she dodges. Hulk punches, but she dodges.

“Stand _still_,” Hulk roars.

“No.” Angry Girl is breathing hard. Tired. But still dodging.

*

“You could just talk to me about it. Or to Hulk. We’re not gonna judge, we have basically no basis for comparison of emotional stability. Whatever fucked-up stuff is in your brain, trust me, we’ve thought worse.” He tries to turn the little metal thingy with his fingers, but it scrapes him, and he winces, sucking his fingers.

“You’re not thousands of years old, Midgardian. Get back to me when you are.” She hands him the alien socket wrench. He takes it, and it does a much better job than his soft puny Banner fingers of turning the little metal thingy in the direction they need it to go.

“That’s bullshit, and you know it. C’mon.” 

“You wouldn’t understand.”

*

She gets more distant after The Saga of the Valkyrie, Part Two comes out, and the whole ship starts treating her the way they treat Thor: bowing, nodding respectfully, asking her opinion about things. Bruce and Hulk both notice it, the way no one seems to mind if she’s drunk, or silent, or weird. 

They love her. They don’t care that she was a monster. They see that you can stop being a monster, if you want. Hulk and Bruce both notice it.

*

“Oh, hey, it’s you,” Bruce says, hastily shoving away his pen and paper as Valkyrie walks in the door. “I thought you’d be . . . somewhere . . . else.” He winces as he trails off.

“You thought I’d be hanging out with my new friends,” Valkyrie corrects. “What was that you were doing?”

“What?”

“That you shoved under a blanket, what was that?”

“Nothing. I —” he sighs as she wrestles him away from it with one hand and grabs it up with the other. She is really really strong. She holds him in place easily.

“You should practice your sparring more, puny Banner,” Valkyrie says, smiling at him, her face way too close to his.

“Told you I’m not interested in sparring,” Bruce manages, and feels his body flush hot at her answering grin of delight. 

Then she releases her hold on him, pushes away, and sits down next to the bed with his papers in her hands.

“You’re just going to read that? It’s private!”

“So was my story that you told to everyone,” Valkyrie retorts. “And besides, I told you that I’m not a good person.”

“How interesting that you feel the need to come in here to prove that to me, just when everyone else is telling you different.” Bruce rolls his eyes and crosses his arms. 

Valkyrie ignores him and begins reading aloud. “The sharp rough metal that nicks my finger and makes me bleed. The rich bright red of Thor’s cape. The sting of being slapped and feeling it. The easy balance of walking upright.” She pauses and looks up at him. “What the fuck is this?” 

Grimacing, he reaches down and flips back a page, pointing to the title of that list.

“Banner’s Senses,” she reads. “Okay. You’re keeping a list of things you . . . feel?”

“I’m thinking about what makes me me. What makes Hulk Hulk. Why we’re different. I’m writing it down.” 

“You sound like him when you get flustered,” Valkyrie points out. Bruce grimaces more. “That’s not a bad thing. He’s a very forthright and expressive public speaker.”

“I’ll remember that next time I give a conference paper,” Bruce sighs. He watches as she flips through the pages to his other lists. 

“Banner’s Dreams. Hulk’s Fears. Banner’s Fears. They all like this?”

He snatches the papers out of her hands, and this time she doesn’t fight him. “I guess. I’m just . . . I’m trying to figure things out.”

She doesn’t speak for a few seconds, and eventually he has to look up to meet her eyes. “Weird that you didn’t ask me for help. I know Hulk better than anyone. I know you both.”

Bruce looks down at his papers again, at all the words scrawling helplessly across the paper, at the desperate slanting lists that go nowhere. “You’re the reason I was doing it. You were the last person I could ask. And yeah, I thought you’d be hanging out with your new friends, because you wouldn’t need us anymore, and that’s _fine_, by the way, I was _trying_ to get them to accept you, and—”

“I’m the—what? What reason? Also, shut up, I like you and Hulk way better than those Asgardian snobs.”

Bruce smiles at her, and she smiles back, softly, in a way he thinks she’s only done with Hulk before.

It’s confusing. He tries not to ball his hands in the papers and crumple them.

“You’re the only thing we’ve ever agreed on,” Bruce says, finally. “The only person we’ve ever felt the same way about. Even Betty, Hulk never really got to know her. And she was from my life before he was born. You, he got to know first, and then he shared you with me, and now . . . it’s confusing.”

Valkyrie blinks. Bruce is pretty sure that this is the kind of emotional outpouring that would normally send her for the door or at least for a bottle, but she just nods slowly. “So, what, you’re both friends with the same person and suddenly you don’t know where he ends and you begin?”

“It sounds dopey when you put it like that,” Bruce frowns. The list beneath his left thumb is _Hulk’s Pet Peeves_. At the top of the list is the word _Banner_. Bruce scrubs a hand over his face. He reaches for a change of subject. “How’s it going with the Asgardian snobs?”

She settles further into the bed, back to the wall, and sighs. “Great, honestly. It’s amazing what a little propaganda can do to alter the minds of the weak. Loki has been so proud.”

He sits back, coming to rest gingerly beside her. “Yeah, you sound like him.” 

She elbows him in the side.

He takes a breath and takes a chance, saying the thing she never likes to hear. “It’s not propaganda if you really did all those things.”

She gives him a long look. “It’s propaganda if it doesn’t also show me working as a scrapper for the Grandmaster. Hurting people. Too drunk to care about anyone.”

“Especially yourself.”

“Wow. You really don’t have anything to drink around here, huh?” She lets out a shuddery breath and rubs her hands on her thighs. She’s wearing simple woven fabric trousers, just as she has most days since they’ve been here; the soft, light clothes make her seem more like a person and less like a god, but Bruce isn’t fooled.

“We could make a trip to the replicator and pick up something poisonous.”

“Nah.” 

They sit in silence together for a while, the weight of it heavy around them. 

“I think Thor is really glad to see the people accept you. He needed an ally, someone to help him command. Other than his dickbag brother.”

“I know that.”

The silence descends again.

Bruce doesn’t really know what a normal person would say in this scenario, how they might try to reassure Valkyrie or show her that she’s different now. He knows what he’d want to hear, though.

“I don’t think you’re a good person,” he offers, into the quiet.

Valkyrie looks at him sidelong. “No? After all that talk about me being a hero?”

“Oh, you’re a hero. Trust me, I know a lot of heroes. They’re mostly assholes.”

She laughs. “That’s true in my experience as well.” 

Bruce nods, licks his lips, tries again. “I know you liked it. Sometimes. Hurting people. I know it feels good, especially when you’re hurting, and alone, and you don’t have anything else.”

He risks a glance at her, hoping he hasn’t gone too far. She’s looking at him squarely. “You ever let the Hulk out just because—not because you were in danger, not because you had to, but just because you wanted to?”

“Every single time,” Bruce answers, and feels her hand slam into his sternum, pinning him back against the wall. She’s leaning over him. His breath is coming so fast and the Hulk is ready beneath his skin but he doesn’t move, doesn’t struggle, doesn’t push against her strength. 

“You liked it,” she says, not a question.

“Who wouldn’t?” Bruce grimaces. Lots of people wouldn’t. “Yeah. I liked it.”

Valkyrie’s hand travels up from his sternum, still putting pressure on his skin, passing over his throat and up until she has his chin held in her palm. She holds him still.

“Hulk said you liked this, too.” 

He shudders against the force of her hands on him, the violence she could visit upon his weak, small body. His cells feel like they’re all, individually, on fire, like he’s burning up inside her grip.

Bruce can’t nod, and he can’t bring himself to speak the _yes_ that she wants, so he blinks and breathes for a long moment. When she doesn’t speak again, he licks his lips and manages, “It’s the same thing. Lashing out, accepting it when someone else does. It’s all punishment.”

She nods. Her legs shift and she straddles his thighs. She pushes against his shoulders with both of her hands. 

“Not midnight yet,” she says. 

“I’m not gonna change if you hit me,” Bruce promises. His voice sounds low and rumbling, not like his own.

She hits him. Bruce’s face snaps to the side with the force of the blow. He feels the impact of it first, and then after a second the hot sting of it against his cheek. He raises his eyes to hers again. She’s watching him intently, waiting, soaking up everything she can find in his expression.

“Fuck that hurt,” he says.

“I can hit you a lot harder.”

“Can you?”

She draws back and swings, with her other hand this time, making contact with his other cheek. It’s much, much harder, and Bruce feels rather than hears the involuntary cry of pain tear out of his throat. 

“You’re so very pretty when you’re in pain.” She grasps his chin again, lifting his head so he has to look her in the eye. “How do you keep the Hulk from coming out?”

“I don’t wanna go,” Bruce replies. “I’m right where I wanna be.” He thinks his lip might be split at the corner. He prods it with his tongue.

Leaning in, she kisses him there, right where he’s bleeding, and he surges up against her, kissing her fully. She bites and slams him back against the wall again.

“You’re not a good person either,” she says, against his mouth. “I see you.”

Bruce nods. “I see you,” he says.

She kisses him again, then pulls back and slaps him, hard, high on his cheekbone. He grunts with the force of it. 

“Again,” he says, “I know you want to hit me ag—”

She cuts him off with the next blow, and then the next, snapping his head back and forth. The anger builds inside him, not the Hulk but just Banner, and before he can think about it or even know why he’s doing it he’s pushing up against her, roaring, shoving his shoulder into her torso and using his momentum to tackle her down onto the bed. She absorbs the blow easily, twisting him around, moving until it’s him on his back on the bed, him pinned with her strength above him.

“You wanna fight, but you don’t wanna win, huh,” she says. “That about the size of it? Puny Banner?”

Bruce surges against her grip, thrashing and twisting, but she holds him tight. 

“Fuck you.”

“Other way round,” she says. Bruce strains his neck upwards and finds her mouth, drawing her down into a kiss, wet and hard. She kisses him like she knows him, and he kisses back the same way, like he’s drowning. Suddenly there’s pain, and he’s being yanked backwards out of the kiss, Valkyrie’s fist in his hair tight and unrelenting.

“You want me to rough you up and fuck you,” she says, not quite a question. He’s hard against her hip and he knows she can feel it, so he grins, feeling a flash of pain as his lip splits a little further.

“You want to rough me up and fuck me,” he growls, and her laugh is dangerous and low. She tunnels and rips through his clothes, popping buttons as she goes.

“That’s my best shirt,” Bruce frowns, watching her throw its tatters on the floor. She gets his attention back by grabbing an exposed nipple and twisting hard. Bruce arches up into it and then melts down out of it, the pain cascading through his body and none of it none of it calling up the Hulk. 

She’s mostly naked now, too, he notices, the soft woven trousers all that’s left, and those riding low on her hips to reveal a line of pelvic muscle that Bruce wants to follow, wants to taste. He drags his gaze upward and Valkyrie is gorgeous, of course she’s gorgeous, all hard-packed planes of muscle rippling over her abs, her biceps, her shoulders. This is someone who can spar with the Hulk, who can put the Hulk down whenever she wants to. Bruce groans and closes his eyes while she slaps him again, stinging, on his chest this time. 

Inevitability rises between them like heat, time counting down to the moment when she pushes his face to the side, pushes his cheek down into the mattress and sinks down on top of him, moaning as she goes, and _god_ she makes a lot of noise, Bruce has never heard a woman make so much noise, sound so greedy, sound so loud. He meets her thrust for thrust, trapped between her hard thighs, and kiss for kiss, accepting every bite from her gleaming sharp teeth. 

“Hurt me,” Bruce gasps, between kisses, between bites, because he can still feel her holding back. “Hurt me, I know you want to, hurt me, you can do it, I want you to, hurt me, Valkyrie, come on, do it—”

“Fuck, shut _up_,” she growls, and fucks him harder, faster, her hips shoving hard and relentless against his body. She pinches him, and slaps him, and twists his nipples and pulls his hair, her hands rough but controlled, taking what she needs from him, giving him what he needs from her until they’re both lost in the sensations. She comes, biting his shoulder, her fist clenched around his throat, screaming like something inhuman, something ancient and powerful and unknowable. Bruce comes too, almost doesn’t notice, his eyes wide and staring at the god above him; then, a minute or two later, when she’s collapsed onto her side, he reaches out hesitantly to stroke the shoulder of his friend beside him.

“Angry Girl,” Bruce murmurs. Valkyrie laughs. Bruce feels his face light up with wonder at the sound.

“Yeah. You too.”

At midnight, he changes; Valkyrie rolls over in bed and pats the Hulk on the stomach in a friendly way. She goes back to sleep.

When Bruce comes back to himself a day later, he has no bruises, no marks, nothing to show for what happened. But he carries it inside himself nonetheless. 

He shows up at her quarters that night long before midnight. She lets him in. She slaps him into himself. Hours later, he lets his body ripple into its other form.

*

Hulk watches the sparring in approval. Angry Girl is training more to be like her, Valkyries. Women follow her around. Take her orders. She tells them what to do and they do it.

“Angry King,” Hulk calls her, once, after training. She laughs. 

“I’m not royalty, big guy. There are too many kings on this ship already.”

“You the best one,” Hulk says. He feels it. He likes to see her have power. It’s a new feeling. Hulk never liked when anyone else had power, before. She could use her power to hurt him, but Hulk knows she won’t.

Hulk trusts her.

They spar together. Angry Girl has to do a lot of sparring now, but still spars with Hulk. Hulk knocks her down, and laughs.

“Hey, listen,” she says, standing up. “You know what Banner and I are doing?”

Huffing out a laugh, Hulk grimaces. “Fucking,” he says. They do it all the time now.

“You all right with it?” Her face is open, soft. Hulk is glad. 

“You like Banner better than Hulk?” Hulk asks, smiling.

Angry Girl shakes her head. “Never,” she promises.

“Then fuck,” Hulk says. “Now less talk, more sparring.”

Her eyes are bright. Her teeth behind her smile are sharp. Hulk loves her. 

“Watch yourself,” she says, and lunges.

*

“Okay, but why is Thor constantly lurking around your drills with the new Valkyries?” Bruce asks, passing her the bottle. She takes it, takes a swig, then passes it back and goes back to the list she’s writing. Bruce can’t see what it is, but she’s been adding to his lists for a while now: _Hulk’s Food Opinions_ and _Banner’s Worst Jokes_ and _Things Hulk and Banner Both Do That Are Annoying_. Bruce rolls his eyes at each one, but he can’t help feeling hot, fierce, joyful shame every time she casually documents his secrets, his insides.

He’s started writing other lists, for her. _Valkyrie’s Defense Mechanisms_ and _Things Valkyrie Thinks Are Funny That Aren’t_ and _Ways Valkyrie is Secretly an Asgardian Snob_. When he shows them to her, she yells at him and debates every single point, makes him show evidence for each one and then tells him he’s wrong anyway. But she keeps the lists in a little stack in her room, one of her very few possessions. Bruce hopes she feels the way about them that he feels about the ones she’s made for him. He hopes she feels understood.

“Thor wanted to be a Valkyrie when he was little,” she answers. “He wants to be on the team.” 

“That’s really cute,” Bruce says, considering. “So he just moons around your practices wishing he were a girl so you could teach him to fight and get him a pegasus.”

“The pegasus dimension is really hard to get to. I’m not convinced we’ll be able to get them.” But Bruce can hear the calculations behind her words, the desire. She’s thinking again like a military commander, and she’s ready to fly at the head of a Valkyrie battalion. Her soldiers, all former healers and farmers and mathematicians, look up to her with awe, and would follow her anywhere. He wonders how long before they try a side-trip to the pegasus dimension.

She’s still scribbling her list, and he makes another half-hearted attempt to steal it from her, to see what she’s writing, but she avoids him easily.

“You’ll get them,” he says, soft and confident. She looks up at him, cocking her head in a way that means a question. Bruce knows that now. 

“You’re supposed to be the one who knows me, not the one who believes in me without question,” she says, after a moment. “You’re supposed to know me better than all those useless Asgardians.”

“I do,” Bruce says. “I know you’re mean, and self-destructive, and an asshole, and I know you’ll do whatever it takes to defend your people. And I know that if you want a Pegasus, you’ll have one.”

Valkyrie smiles, a mean glint behind her eyes, and she kisses him, soft this time, soft the way that they’re sometimes soft with one another, now. Then she looks down and her list and sighs. 

“Got anything to add?” She shoves the paper at him suddenly.

The first list is _Hulk’s Feelings About Fucking_. The first item is _sparring is better_, and the second is _annoyance when Banner does it_. There are a few more that are by turns obvious and deeply surprising.

The second list is _Banner’s Favorite Places To Be Hurt_, and both the selections and the order they go in are unflinchingly accurate. Bruce shivers. He looks up from the list and meets her eyes. He swallows.

“I think there are a few you’ve left out,” he says.

Her gaze on him is bright and hot, focused. “Tell me,” she says. Bruce guides her hands to the places on his body that she has yet to hurt. In turn, she guides him to the ways she still wants to hurt him.

It’s what they deserve.

*

“I ran away,” Angry Girl tells Hulk. “I was a coward. Soft and puny. Why don’t they remember that?”

Hulk finishes drinking the big bowl of green and brown liquid. He misses fruit and meat, but he doesn’t mind it anymore. He doesn’t know how long they’ve been on the ship. A long time. “Not what they want to remember,” Hulk says. 

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“Never a coward,” Hulk adds.

“Come on. You would never have done it. Given up the fight, run away.”

Hulk thinks about this for a long time. “If Angry Girl died. If Hulk saw. Maybe.”

Angry Girl puts down her food and moves over next to Hulk. She sits on the floor next to him. She sticks out her legs like him. They’re the same. Him big, her little. Hulk likes it.

Another thought works its way through Hulk’s mind. He doesn’t want to say it. Just thinking it makes him angry. But he thinks it will help. “Sometimes it feels good to be soft. And puny. Sometimes better to be Banner.”

She rests her head against his arm. “He thinks the same thing about you, you know.”

*

Valkyrie takes him apart, and Bruce, in his turn, helps Valkyrie fall apart with him. They fuck hard, and fast, and rough, up against bulkheads, screaming and grunting with her hands digging dents into the metal; but they fuck slow, too, Bruce going down on her until she yanks on his hair and makes him stop, Valkyrie scratching him and biting him one inch of skin at a time until he shakes like a leaf under her hands, and sometimes, sometimes, the two of them just bringing their bodies together, softly, with gentle grinning kisses and hands that caress instead of pinch.

Those nights are the hardest to take, when they look at each other and know each other and choose to be soft with each other anyway. Those are the nights that sometimes mean they don’t talk for a couple of days, or that if they talk, they don’t touch each other. But they always come back together, one or both of them with a new list to discuss or a new bottle of cleaning solution, and then they fuck again, hard and angry or soft and weak, however they need it, according to the mood that takes them that night. 

“I always miss these, after you change back,” Valkyrie says to him one night, running her hands over the marks she’s made on his back, digging her fingertips into his bruises and scrapes. Bruce pushes up against her hand, loving the feeling, the reminder, of what they do for each other.

“Everything ends,” Bruce says, which is a weird and sad thing to say. He figures he should’ve said something sexy or at least neutral, but instead he said the weird sad thing. He meant it, though. It’s true.

“I know,” she says, and kisses the places where she made him bleed, lips soft, both of them soft in this one moment, at least. Together for this short time.

*

It’s a Bruce day when the children of Thanos show up and begin slaughtering what’s left of the Asgardian people. The civilians crowd onto The Hope of Asgard while Thor and Loki buy time. 

Valkyrie is in her white armor and cape, sword drawn, running towards the battle. Bruce steps in front of her, holding up his hands. He can’t stop her by force, but she skitters to a stop anyway, all of her force brought to a halt by his small, weak body.

“Someone’s gotta go with the people. Protect them,” Bruce says. “V, it has to be you. You and your Valkyries.”

“No way, I’m not the fucking king, I need to stay and . . .”

“You need to _go_,” Bruce yells. Her eyes narrow, and he softens his voice. “It’s okay this time,” he says. “It’s okay for you to go. You need to be their hero now.”

Valkyrie blinks, her lips opening for a moment, and then her expression hardens. “Come with me,” she offers, and Bruce knows it’s not a casual invitation, and that it wasn’t easy for her to say. He bends his neck, presses his forehead to hers. They meet each other’s eyes, and they both know it can’t happen.

“Nah,” he says. “You know how long I’ve been waiting to bust up this ship?” He feels his neck flush green. The Hulk, under his skin, is laughing; they can’t wait to punch through a few bulkheads. The anticipation feels good.

Valkyrie kisses him, just where the flush starts.

“Yeah,” she says, at last. “I know. Fuck ‘em up, fellas.”

And she turns and runs for the escape hatch, runs towards her duty and her people.

Bruce, who’s a lot like her, turns the other way, and, like her, gives in to his purpose.


End file.
